Stephanie
Hi and welcome to Macro Matters. My name is Stephanie Kelly and together with my co-host, Paul Diggle we'll be guiding you through the complex world of politics, economics and markets. Now, we talk a lot on this podcast about the COVID pandemic, and the many, many ways that it has impacted all of our lives, both professionally and of course, personally. And in the economic sphere, well, we thought forecasting was tough before COVID. And boy, are we in for a surprise with this pandemic.
Jerome Powell (sound clip)
You'll notice that we said that the pandemic still provides considerable downside risks to the economy. And that's one of the reasons why is that is the slowness of the rollout. The other another reason why is just the arrival of these new virus strains. We don't know how to, we don't know how to model that. We can have a base case, but we realise no one knows how the how this new vaccine will rollout, how successful it will be, how high we'll be able to drive, vaccination and those sorts of things. So we have a base case, but we always we always look at at the range of possibilities. In this case, we particularly look at the downside risks.
Stephanie
So that was Federal Reserve Chair Jay Powell, and he was highlighting just how COVID has added yet another layer of complexity to forecasting future growth and returns for economists for policymakers and for investors. But today, we want to talk about what that actually means in practice. How do we think about how a vaccine rollout legitimately affects activity and ultimately, the trajectory for short and long term growth. I'm delighted to be joined by two very familiar voices to this podcast. My co-host, Paul Diggle, is here and Chief Economist at Aberdeen Standard Investments, Jeremy Lawson is also joining us. Thanks both so much for joining.
Jeremy
Thank you.
Paul
Thanks, Steph
Stephanie
So let's maybe kick it off. I'm calling my go to you first, just to ask how you kind of think about forecasting in a global pandemic at a very high level. What is the order of which you think about things?
Paul
Yes, I think it's absolutely right to say it was always hard. But it's now got even harder. And in particular, I think we, as economists, no longer do we just have to think about forecasting economic activity and inflation, and monetary and fiscal policy where there are basically these preceding steps that we now need to try and incorporate. And I think the first step is the course of the virus. Case numbers, deaths, what it does to the health system, and more recently, the vaccine rollout. Do we get vaccines? how effective are they? Can we distribute them, do people take them? So that's sort of I think, the first component on this sort of forecasting process. The next and also new stage is the course of lockdowns. This enforced cessation of economic activity. And in part that what you expect to happen with lockdowns and lockdown stringency is a product of the course of the virus or stage one and the course of vaccine rollout. But there's also lots of other things that drive the stringency of lockdown. Things like political preferences and choices. Obedience to the lockdown. So there's a lot of sort of sub components that I'm sure get into of how you forecast the lockdown itself. And there are also it's worth mentioning actual measures out there that try and quantify on an index of zero to 100 the stringency of a lockdown. And then the final stages, how do we translate that all into economic activity? And again, that is a difficult process. It's probably not stationary, the way that the course of the virus and the course of lockdowns affect economic activity, but clearly there must be some link. And that's I think, how we've sort of tried to split this forecasting process. I think the final thing to say is that, although our original area of expertise clearly lies in stage three, forecasting the macro economy, and you know, we're not epidemiologists, but is the phrase you'll always hear at the moment, but we do have to give our best shot at explaining our expectations for the course of the virus, the course of the vaccine roll out and lock down stringency itself. If we can't form views on those things. There's no way we could do stage three, which we're actually trying to do which is forecasting the course of the macro economy.
Stephanie
I think that's a really good point, Paul about kind of saying we recognise our limitations. I think sometimes economists get a bit of grief for trying to get involved in too many areas. But it clearly is the case that having a view on growth means having a view on the virus vaccines and what that means for for lockdown. So maybe let's get a better sense. Jeremy, if I can bring you in on this actually, around that first step, kind of looking at vaccine rollout or looking at the outlook for inoculations in different countries. And I know we've kind of built this sort of a process to try and do it in a more transparent way than just kind of guessing. Could you give us a sense of how that process works?
Jeremy
Yeah. So taking on board, that very reasonable point, which, as economists, we're not epidemiologists, so we can't accurately forecast the short term dynamics of the virus itself. But what we can try and do is, is build a picture of what the most likely course, given the available information, of what say a vaccine rollout process might look like, building it from each of the really important sort of blocks in that process. So what we noticed early on in the pandemic, is that there is a tendency to almost rush straight from, will there be a vaccine that is efficacious or not? Then all the way to the end point of, okay, so what does this mean for the number of people who might be inoculated at the given point, but there are so many important steps and judgments that have to be made along that journey? Right? So we need to take on board. Initially, would we get efficacious vaccines or not but we've crossed that threshold. That's great. But different vaccines have different degrees of efficacy in different circumstances, and different vaccines are available in different ways for key economies. So we have to take that variation into account, when we're building up effectively a national effective efficacy, sorry, effective inoculation into our numbers. We have to look at the course of manufacturing of different vaccines. And we've seen very recently how disruptions in parts of the supply chain or getting ready to prepare for a large increase in production, the future can lead to supply disruptions that slow the pace of rollout, when that supply is binding in the near term. We've seen that with the Pfizer vaccine recently. But we have to have a clearly articulated view of what we think that manufacturing capacity looks like along different way marks. We then have to take into account, you know, the what you might sort of refer to as the you know, the messiness of institutional capacity to get a vaccine to the desired populations, right. It's something we observe. And it shouldn't be surprising because there are unintended consequences of all policies, right. So no implementation of a policy is perfect. But different health systems, different public health systems, different governments in the way they are organised and prepared to fund things they have different abilities to, to deliver vaccines, according to particular schedules to organise themselves, then, once you have that type of information, we also then have to think about it from the demand side. So different individuals have a different amount of receptiveness to taking a vaccine. There is survey information that we can draw on that gives us a sense of what those attitudes are like that those attitudes themselves are not constant over time. So not only do we need to sort of trying to understand, you know, a snapshot in time about willingness to take a vaccine of particular groups in particular countries, but try and factor in how that might change. And so, what you could almost sort of think about every step along the way as being probabilistic, right? So you have a view, for example, about the proportion of people in a given country that are going to be willing to take a vaccine, and then when the demand becomes sort of binding on that progress, then you multiply the two and so effectively. You might start with a very high degree of manufacturing capacity. But the number of ineffective inoculations drops through the successive stages. As you extend your horizon, once you take into account the ability to deliver, once you take into account take up once you take into account efficacy. And so what we try and do, though, is recognise that in each of these different areas, there are bodies of expertise that we can draw on. This is very important, right? It's not that we are then sort of trying to make up our own models of take up rates or efficacy, we're taking the existing body of information, drawing it together, applying it to the country that is, you know, that it is meant for. And then we build that up into an aggregate view that it also allows us to very simply make changes when core components alter. So for example, in the last, in the last two months, we've observed that once it became clear that efficacious vaccines were available, and governments start to promote their use, then across a wide range of countries willingness, at least surveyed willingness to take a vaccine has increased. But that becomes a variable that we can alter in our framework, so that we can then make appropriate adjustments to our terminal forecast for the proportion of the population that has been effectively inoculated at a given point. So that hopefully just gives them an overview of something that is, it's complex, but we think it just provides a better sort of starting point. So that when we go into the next stage, which is arguably even more important, which is, what does that future look like for restrictions on activity, that we're grounding it in a reasonable expectation for what proportion of the population are protected from the virus in different ways?
Stephanie
That's great. I think that that's a useful way just to understand how we're thinking about it. I think the crucial thing there is transparency, and just having that framework that you're accountable to and I'm kind of go back to. Maybe then just to move on to steps two and three. How do you take that view that you know, number of effective inoculations, which we are going to go into what we actually think the effect of inoculations for this year look like. But for now, once you've got that first step, what happens in step two? And what happens in Step three, you kind of give us a preview at the beginning, but maybe just to give a little bit more detail about what the nuts and bolts looks like turning the vaccine forecast interview on stringency into an economic forecast.
Paul
Yeah, absolutely. So, on stringency, the first thing to say is that it can be measured, and there are measures out there in the way that there is from the subcomponents of stringency or of lockdown. So these might be things like are schools closed or not, is hospitality closed or not? And within that, is that operating via takeaway only so different levels? Is international travel band subject to bands from high risk areas requiring quarantine, requiring a test before you travel or are there no limitations at all. Is internal travel restricted? Are the size of gatherings limited and what size? So all these things go into essentially a lockdown stringency index, which we as economists can measure and compare across countries. That's the first thing to say. The second thing to say is going from stage one vaccines and the broader state of the pandemic too stringency is not mechanical, it partly depends on our expectations for vaccination and effective coverage of the population. But it depends on a lot of other things as well. virus incidents and the effect of previous lockdowns previous in containing the virus. Weather has some impact it seems on virus incidence as well. Political preferences so the desire to sustain a certain level of lockdown versus a certain level of virus circulation is going to differ according to the political preferences in a country or between countries or within a country over time. So there's a lot of things that go into an expectation for lockdown stringency, but just like we've now had to incorporate projections for vaccine rollout, in that stage process that Jeremy's explained, we also are trying to incorporate projections for lockdown stringency. Building it up from the subcomponents and changing it over time, as say, a government announces its plans for lockdown stringency over time. So that's sort of stage two and then stage three is how does all that then become an economic forecast. And just like going from stage one to two, two to three involves a lot of other additional considerations as well. Things like the broader macroeconomic policy environment, the global trade environment, all the things that we normally try and take into account in active activity forecasts. But clearly, it also involves the translation of lockdown stringency into activity. Now, that's probably what is not a straightforward relationship. It's not stationary over time, a given level of restrictions might translate into different levels of economic activity over time. If say firms become better at operating, as they seem to have done within a certain level of restrictions. Also, a given level of restrictions can translate differently into mobility and economic activity, as obedience of those changes to those restrictions changes over time. So all this is just to say, it's a very difficult process, forecasting has become even more difficult during the pandemic, our sort of confidence intervals, our numbers must have increased as a result of that. But being sort of accountable and transparent of how we follow this stage process, is I think the key thing for us.
Stephanie
I think that's a super useful just, I think, important ground to cover in terms of what it actually looks like when economists are giving you forecasts, or at least when we're giving forecasts, you know, in this kind of period, what what is actually happening behind the scenes, just looking behind the curtain a bit, I think, is hopefully helpful for listeners. Now, maybe let's get into the nuts and bolts of what we're actually expecting. So we did have an episode on vaccine diplomacy and vaccine nationalism a few weeks back, that is still very relevant. We talked to a lot of the time particularly about European challenges. So maybe if we keep things a little bit more high level or a little bit more focused on the differences across regions, I wanted to ask both about developed markets, and then also emerging markets, because it seems as though there are very different pictures coming through. But Paul, maybe let's, let's start off with the developed market side of things. And Jeremy, I'll bring you in on this again afterwards. But just what are you seeing in terms of for 2021? Are you hopeful? Are you encouraged? Or are you concerned around the outlook for vaccine rollout and ultimate inoculation in developed markets writ large and 2021?
Paul
Yeah but if we take the stages along the way to a vaccine view that Jeremy outlines. Development of vaccines themselves - done - sort of 100% probability at this point, but manufacturing, delivery, rollout, so ability to administer them to the population, take up amongst the population and the efficacy of the vaccines given. If you think about those stages, they sort of playing out in very interesting ways amongst the DMs. So basically, all the major DMs are pretty well positioned in terms of manufacture. Oh Sorry, I should caveat this. In terms of pre-orders of vaccines, they're all pretty well positioned. So the US, the UK, Europe have all pre ordered in excess of their populations, the number of doses per capita doses is greater than the populations actually taking delivery of what they pre ordered, has played out already quite differently, amongst the DMS. And we did a whole episode on why Europe have fallen behind in that process, why its latest speed at placing its pre orders had had slowed down taking delivery of vaccines? So for the US and UK, they look pretty good in terms of their delivery. I mean, there are some reasons to think that the supply slows a little bit from here, Europe is clearly the concern, and especially in the early stages in terms of taking delivery of vaccines, then in terms of actually rolling them out to their population. So administering them in large scale vaccine settings and in GP surgeries and everything in the middle. Your starting point is probably that DMs can do this better than most Ems, just from a sort of relative wealth perspective. But smaller, denser, more concentrated countries are probably better at doing it than larger, more diverse, more dispersed, less dense countries or indeed Federation's and large groupings, like the EU where there's we have very different health care systems, different levels of sort of medical, digital medical record keeping. So I think again, Europe's gonna have a bit of challenge on that front in particular. The US as well a bit. The UK clearly so far has done very well in terms of actually getting them into the arms of its population. They need to talk about take up. The trends and the take up surveys as Jeremy's highlighted are generally in the right direction. But absolute take up willingness, again, especially in European countries, especially, especially in France, are worryingly low and potentially fall below, if they don't keep rising fall below the level that we guarantee herd immunity, which is, seems to be around two thirds of the population requiring immunity. And then the final one is efficacy. And here the sort of the mix of vaccines that the country has pre ordered and taken delivery of seems to be what matters most of all, the US is rolling out the highly effective mRNA versions of the vaccine where efficacy is in the high 90s. By contrast, the UK is rolling out, primarily the AstraZeneca vaccine where the efficacy is lower. Now, efficacy could change over time, variants could could lower it, dosing regimens seem to affect efficacy as well. But on the face of it, it looks like the UK is actually the worst place in terms of the efficacy of the vaccine mix it's going to deliver.
Stephanie
Great, I think, I mean, it's really interesting that you say about the kind of different factors that might drive the effectiveness of the vaccine rollout, because I was just talking to a friend of mine in Ireland back in Ireland yesterday. And I was saying, Ireland has been relatively slow of the mark. Part of that is the result of the European rollout. But she was saying one of the challenges is yes, it's a small country with a small population that don't have a centralised, digitalized health system. And so their ability to get to people is one of the big challenges and it's really hard thing to overcome in the midst of a pandemic. Jeremy can I bring you in here and get your take, particularly on on what Paul just said, on developed markets, but also then evolving on to emerging markets.
Jeremy
I think, just from a from a high level perspective, I think one of the things that is clear in our latest set of projections is that the headline number for estimated effective inoculations by the end of 2021 hasn't changed much since we last did the exercise, you know, in sitting around November, right. So still around the 1.4 billion mark. But what did change was the effectively the the relative reach across the advanced economies and emerging economies. We've actually lifted the estimated numbers up in a number of advanced economies, and we've had to push them down in emerging economies. And so why is that? Well, part of it actually relates to the way that advanced economy purchase programmes is pre ordering programmes that Paul referred to, effectively crowding poorer countries out. I'm sure this is something that you broached on the diplomacy podcast, but from a justice standpoint, right, it's understandable, but also a little bit unsavoury, just how little resources have been going into the Covax project, for example, right. Now, you might argue that in a typical emerging market with a much more favourable age distribution, and therefore you have an expectation that hospitalizations and fatalities associated with the virus might be lower. So from that perspective, maybe that's understandable, but from another perspective, particularly in the way that going forward in countries where vaccine penetration is relatively low, the potential for them to be squeezed out of parts of the international system. You can travel from this country, but you can't travel from that country will can't travel from that country because we didn't make vaccines available. Right. And this wouldn't be the first time in history, we've been plagued by similar issues. So that sense in which you prioritise your own population, rather than the global population. In this case, it's a you know, it's a concern. It's also the case that though, that we have to be careful that we don't talk about emerging economies and developing countries as though they're monolithic. And there are some radically sort of different outcomes transpiring in different parts of the emerging market complex. I think we know, for example, that South and Central America have really struggled so far. But even within that we're seeing Chile make very good advances on, you know, on vaccine rollout and those plans in part because of the coherence of the Chilean state, compared to some other South American countries. Equally, you know, Israel is in the bucket of emerging economies, certainly within emerging markets that have bond index, and has been arguably the most successful country today in progressing sort of vaccine rollout. Russia and China are countries that have been able to generate their own vaccines, and will though in China's case, that vaccination programme is going to proceed more slowly than elsewhere, because the vaccine because the virus itself is circulating at such low levels to constraints on activity are likely to be relatively, you know, relatively minimal. The countries that you sort of become more concerned about, I think those where, you know, you lacked that health care infrastructure. Right. So if we're talking about digitalization challenges in Ireland, well, one can only imagine the scale of those in Sub Saharan Africa, right, or Guatemala, or, you know, you know, countries countries like that. So that's one issue. Second, in a lot of poorer countries, urbanisation rates are incredibly low still. So much, much lower than they are in the advanced economies, and sort of distributing vaccines in highly dispersed populations that are very remote. In some cases, they're difficult to reach, certainly, you know, certainly with some of the mRNA vaccines that presents a particular challenge. And so, so again, we have this realisation that in our projections, we have to take into account that slower rollout, and, and maybe taking many years before you reach herd immunity in those countries, we have to take into account that that might actually create the conditions for vaccine escape, actually, which then blows back on to the advanced economies in some way. But then, then, I'm also conscious that when we do our global growth forecasts, you do a market forecast, they're effectively weighted by the relative importance of a country's GDP or market. And the distribution of the world's population is quite different than the distribution of the world's GDP. And so again, we tend to talk less about what is a massive problem, just because it doesn't move markets in the same way as when we're talking about China, the United States and the EU. But it is something that we have clearly articulated views on.
Stephanie
Yeah, I think that that that point really hasn't been made very much. I have to say this is one of the first times I've heard it be made that the, you know, the kind of the GDP weighting that maybe naturally people involved in financial markets place on this kind of Outlook and can maybe skew the realities for people on the ground in terms of what they're actually going to experience. And I'm interested actually, to pull in a little bit of what you said, around China. China's an interesting case study where they are producing a vaccine, it's kind of unclear about how efficacious it is, manufacturing seems quite low, but their demand is also relatively low, because they're able to constrain the virus. And I think that brings us nicely to the next section, which is about the stringency. So have you translate a vaccine view into a view on reopening? So maybe Paul, to bring you back in around the overall outlook for stringency changes, or reopening in the coming months? What are you kind of expecting by way of reopening? What do you expect to go first? And then what do you expect to kind of take a little bit longer?
Paul
Yeah so I think you can think about a number of ways. One would be what is the general speed of reopening. And our broad expectation is, it is slower than it was last summer, where there's now a general consensus, the reopening them was overly rapid, is perhaps a year long process to remove and deconstruct the majority of restrictions. And that probably applies in most economies. But clearly, some will have more desire to ease more rapidly than others who are taking more cautious approach. There's then the ordering of which restrictions are lifted. And we think that ordering goes something like what has already been announced in the UK, which is schools open first, then you try and open outdoor hospitality, then you try and open other forms of non-essential retail, then you allow increasingly large gatherings and a bit more in the way of internal movement. And only later on, if ever do you allow an increased amount of international travel? So I think that ordering is generally thought of as the right kind of ordering something like allow the most economically damaging restrictions to lift first. And then there's what remains in the long term to say the reopening is by and large, a 2021 process but what remains at the end of 2021 into the long term. And our thought is something like its international travel restrictions or some form thereof. That largely remain perhaps also forms of mask mandates. There's interesting question about whether countries follow the regional versus national approach in this reopening, clearly in the summer reopening. And then the autumn winter, lockdown 2.0, there was a lot of regional approaches taken that were to do with the levels of circulating virus. I think that by and large, the view, at least in Europe is that those regional approaches were unsuccessful. And it's not the preference to go down that route this time around. Certainly the UK is announcements recently don't point to that. But on the other hand, very large, physically large countries with very different rates of virus incidents, even after vaccine rollout, say the US it's a continental setting. And its politics is obviously quite dispersed as well, perhaps do continue to follow that regional route. And then perhaps the final thing to consider is does lockdown easing pause or reverse at any point? And one obviously hopes not. But clearly, there are scenarios of plausible vaccine escape scenarios, mutation scenarios in which there may well be a desire to at least ease the pace of easing, one could imagine next winter, say there could be a little bit of that going on. But by and large, the direction of travel seems to be clear, and the ordering seems to be fairly clear as well,
Jeremy
Just to get I just chip in on that. I mean, because I think actually, that point, you already alluded to what is a little bit different in the United States, which is obviously it's, you know, it's federal structure, that actually means that much of this is actually determined at the state and local level, rather than federal level. Australia is another example where individual states impose restrictions at the border with very little input from the from the federal government. And that approach seems likely to continue, that also, the US is interesting, in terms of the ordering being somewhat different, because I think we're all aware that effectively, the average level of restrictions in the US through the winter surge was less onerous than it has been in the UK, in large parts of Europe, not because the virus was you know, was less dangerous. So they're just ticked over 500,000, people, you know, sort of passed away is sort of COVID related, or sort of within a certain time period of having contracted COVID. But it's also, it's fascinating to me is this school versus hospitality trade off in the United States. So in large parts of the US, schools never went back. Right. So actually, you're facing a third consecutive semester, we might call it or term, where some children have not had a full day of in school learning in nearly 12 months. Whilst in those same localities, hospitality is much more open. So the range of restrictions around what you can do, and where you can visit is lower, or where, for example, you can attend sporting events in lower numbers. And so that is also fascinating to me, is the way that different countries have approached the trade offs differently, which are partly institutional, because again, it's not just governments. When you decentralise, for example, education then representatives of teachers can have different views about what is safe and what is not safe. And then that influences sort of opening in a way or for that segment in a way that's different from hospitality. And so I think, again, it's, we're talking about layers of complication in the set of forecasts, we have to build up this fine political economy, cultural economy view, in a sense, to try and anticipate what that sort of future pathway looks like.
Stephanie
And maybe actually just on from that, you mentioned schools versus hospitality from, from an economic impact perspective, when you start feeding a view of stringency into the forecast. What are the things that have the biggest benefit from an economic growth perspective? Is it kids being back at school because parents are more able to work or is it actually hospitality being open? I mean, what are the biggest bang for your buck in terms of reopening an impact on growth. Maybe, I don't know Paul, if you want to, if you want to hit it first, and then Jeremy.
Paul
They are all important, but clearly there's a way in which hospitality can still operate through COVID-secure ways in terms of takeaways and outdoor dining. By contrast, it's much harder for the quality of education to be the same in a setting where it's all online. I speak from personal experience here and the impact it has on parents as well. So I have not seen sort of robust empirical studies on this. But I imagine that you do get more bang for your buck in terms of near term activity. But then, of course, there's a crucial consideration about its long term effects, in terms of human capital destruction from missing, as Jeremy says, up to a year of in person in classroom schooling. So it's not just what does this do to GDP next year, but it's how does this impact our economic growth or long term damage from the crisis over the very long term. It's easier, albeit still very difficult, but easier to provide liquidity bridges to hospitality firms that are shut down than it is to, you can't loan out a child their year of education.
Jeremy
Yeah, I think it's a great point. You can plausibly argue that the things that will get you fastest back to say the pre COVID trend, pathway for activity are likely to be the things that are currently operating way below that previous capacity, which is going to be a lot of service sector activity, right. So if you, for example, if you released all restrictions today, then there's going to be a lot more people suddenly in pubs and restaurants and enjoying themselves international. All that sort of stuff, and you'll get this tremendous growth through that pathway. But if we think about it, from a long term perspective, the things that drive potential growth. Again, this is not to diminish the economic role the hospitality sector plays, or the fact though the hardship that a lot of that, especially small proprietors, that have been going through, and the way that if you have too many bankruptcies that can damage potential output itself. But it is incredibly difficult to replace that lost year of quality schooling. Which in some cases is extreme, because you might not have proper access to the internet, you may only have one device to share amongst three or four people in a household or more, right, you might be competing for airtime with 35 other people on a zoom call, right? You might have even difficulty getting your child to sit down, you know that the challenges are enormous. And so what I have seen is, for example, the World Bank, in his long term projections, does take into account the human capital destruction that is associated with the COVID crisis. And you know, you are you're talking about billions of hours of schooling, cumulatively lost through this pandemic. And unless you're of the view that education is just a signalling device, which I'm not. And then that will have effects that last not one year, not five years, but they'll carry on for decades.
Stephanie
So I think this is all really kind of captured just how complex and environment This is for forecasting. And I'm going to be really mean here and ask you to give me just one sentence if you could summarise how you're viewing the economic outlook, against the backdrop of all of what we've talked about. How would you categorise it, Paul?
Paul
Well, let me just do the short term then. The vaccine projections we've talked about, the stringency easing process we've talked about means for the next two years above trend, global growth and the headline level, at least some pretty strong and punchy, global growth numbers, but that's just the near term.
Stephanie
And then Jeremy in the long term?
Jeremy
Okay. My takeaway is that the strength of that cyclical recovery is going to in the near term, mask, the extent of the long term damage that this crisis is doing, that it is still reasonable to expect a fairly substantial hit to long term potential growth that will vary significantly across countries. And part of our responsibility to be focused on that angle as well because it will have important consequences, not just for economies and welfare, but for markets. But you'll hear more from us on that front in in future episodes and research, I would hope.
Stephanie
Well, unfortunately, that's all the time we have for today. But a huge thanks to Paul and Jeremy for your insights, your candour on the challenges that economists are facing in terms of forecasting growth now and going forward. And the biggest thanks goes to our audience. We've been really blown away by the amount of interest and support in this podcast, and we're really keen to keep that momentum going. So if you do have any comments on this discussion today, questions or ideas for future episodes, you can email us at Macromatters@aberdeenstandard.com. Otherwise, please join us again next week when we'll be talking about our research into the economics of gender equality and how policies can boost female participation and ultimately long term growth.
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